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Cyclone Idai in Mozambique (3/14/2019 18UTC landfall)

Selected because: tragic consequences


GFS analyses at 0.5 degree resolution (winds and heights at 850mb), column water vapor, and IR cloud imagery.

Notebook from the Earthcube-supported DRILSDOWN project

This is a DRILSDOWN project notebook, capturing images from an IDV analysis. To reproduce or operate this Jupyter notebook, you need to have installed The IDV, Anaconda, and set up a few necessary things for the DRILSDOWN package, as explained at https://unidata.github.io/drilsdown/quickstart

Sections within this notebook

  1. The story, with Web and journalism links
  2. The meteorology: large-scale 2D flow evolution
  3. The meteorology: analyses of 3D fields

**The story, with Web and journalism links**:
  • Terrible tragedy in [Mozambique](https://weather.com/news/news/2019-03-13-tropical-cyclone-idai-impacts-mozambique-malawi-0)

**The meteorology, with IDV images**:
  • **Trade surge** 2/25-2/28 pushes air with CWV>50mm (envelope for tropical convection) over Madagascar.
  • **Moist airmass** in Madagascar channel spins up coastal cyclone 3/3, which drifts inland
  • **Weak recirculation** brings it back offshore
  • **Slight midlatitude pulse** on 3/12 helps it intensify, then it landfalls as Cat 3
In [1]:
%reload_ext ipython_IDV

850 hPa Z and winds, and PW with 50mm emphasized

Much earlier: quiescent basin, but NH trade surge begins

In [3]:
%make_image -capture legend -caption 'Feb 21, weeks ahead'
In [6]:
%make_image -capture legend -caption 'Northern trade surge crosses equator at west, southern one appears'
In [19]:
%make_image -capture legend -caption 'Souther surge approaches Madagascar, northern surge south of Sri Lanka'
In [8]:
%make_image -capture legend -caption 'Fateful airmass crosses Madagascar, while eastern cyclone forms'
In [9]:
%make_image -capture legend -caption 'Swirl in Mozambique channel; mid-ocean cyclone matures'
In [10]:
%make_image -capture legend -caption 'First landfall 3/3'
In [11]:
%make_image -capture legend -caption 'Drifting around over Africa'
In [13]:
%make_image -capture legend -caption 'Back in the Channel. IR cloud data now: Note relevance of 50mm (dark blue)'
In [14]:
%make_image -capture legend -caption 'A slight midlatitude pulse. Again note relevance of 50mm (dark blue)'
In [15]:
%make_image -capture legend -caption 'Wicked eye. Bad news.'
In [16]:
%make_image -capture legend -caption 'Landfall'

The loop

In [17]:
# Moving image 
%make_movie -capture legend -caption 'Whole sequence: 3 weeks'

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The meteorology: analyses of 3D fields, etc.

Note: Nothing especially 3D about all this.
In [18]:
!date

Tue Mar 19 19:16:35 EDT 2019

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